Hey, I won't be able to make it the next couple weeks. It's this work thing. Due to the ungodly hour of the morning I must be there, I need to be in bed prior to when the group finishes.After I get my permanent schedule, I should be able to make it in again.John, could I talk you into catching me up on the material on the weekend? Besides, that'd give me an excuse to see AJ before (insert pronoun here) leaves.

Which one is more real? At one of our first meetings, the idea that the physical body is less real than the subtle/astral body or the spirit/soul came up. And it just threw me, my physical body has always felt more real to me and initially inseparable from any other layers. Later when we started exercising our subtle bodies, the difference in perspective very much affected how each of us approached the efforts to move our subtle bodies, and to especially move them out of our physical bodies.

I find this very interesting as I am practicing more and more, the subtle body is starting to take on more reality for me and I am amazed that I can pull it out of my physical body, when before I always felt that they were fused, that every bit of me contained all myselves and that they were bound to one another.

A question for everyone: have the subtle body exercises changed your beliefs and understandings of your body?

Just wanted to drop a note to everybody and make sure that people still wanted to get together. I know Brenden plans on coming over and napping (he's working an insanely early shift) so he'll be alert when people come over. On the mailing list, a few people have stated they wanted to get together in teriel's absence.

This Tuesday, August 14, starting at 8:00pm until.. well, whenever people get sick of hanging out.

Finding a practice partner So this week I have been repeatedly trying to find someone to practice the energy flow exercise with. My husband tried a little, but the back of his hand doesn't receive energy, so basically my attempts were reduced to-am I sending hot or cold energy? I planned on talking to my coven about it, but I was the only one who showed to the full moon. The high priestess thought it would be a good activity to do in one of our Sunday classes. Gabe, my spiritscraft partner has been incredibly ill all week, so no go there. I was desperate! Then at work today, I just decided to try it on my coworker A-rad. He is friendly to occult stuff, but generally not interested. I tried it on him, and he was interested and has been practicing energy work on his own for several years! And it worked, he knew what direction I was sending it, and he tried it too, and I figured out what he was up too. So now he and I can work on it during breaks at work.

Weird experience At the last experimenters group, the early meeting group had a truly excellent experience with the evenings last experiment, a chakra cycling meditation. It was described aptly by one participant as psychedelic. The high was incredible. So I tried the chakra meditation again a few nights before my surgery. We had the window open because it was hot. I managed through it very well and was gathering energy at my crown despite a few distracting noises outside like a dog barking and a child crying. Just as I was preparing to release the energy over my body, a man outside shouted to someone else, "I hate you!" Boy was that a messed up energy release, I felt depleted. I ritually cleansed myself afterwards and that helped a bit, but I was pretty disturbed about it. I will be doing that meditation on cool nights with the window closed from now on!

I have been trying to do the chakra meditation again, but I keep getting distracted by my breathing. I am hoping to focus better on it again.